No God's Country - Resistance, Forged in the Dark
A downloadable game
The Prelude
It was a Friday when the Walls appeared. 100 meters tall, perfectly interlocking and equipped with automated access gates and equipped with lethal weapons, they dropped from near-earth orbit, retro-rockets firing and scorching the suburbs around your city. The Angels appeared soon after. Not in person, of course. But on the screens of our leaders they told us of the great war in Heaven, and that we had been drafted.
We were divided, cut off from our families and neighbors, but it was only so that we could focus on our divine mission. Our rights were violated, but it was for the betterment of our Heavenly Dominion here on Earth. Dissenters disappeared, but only because their faith was lacking.
The Dominion controls every aspect of your life. They ration your food, control the media, dictate the nightly curfew, tell you when to work and where, and dispatch security teams when there’s a whisper of unrest. Their foot is on your throat and their faithful are always watching.
The Game
No God’s Country is a troupe-style Forged in the Dark d6 dice pool game of near-future rage and cell-based resistance against a repressive authoritarian regime backed by aliens, angels, or both, inspired by the TV Series Colony. Players will take on the roles of the leaders of the Friction managing the grass roots struggle for freedom in the wake of the theofascist overthrow of their society as well as portraying the specialists and freedom fighters who are the last embers of human self-determination. We play to find out if the Friction can smash the overwhelming power of the Dominion through grit, cunning, and determination, or if those embers vanish forever.
This initial ashcan release contains everything you need to play except 5 six-sided dice and 3-5 friends, including:
- 90-Page Ashcan Rulebook- All of the rules and procedures necessary to portray a world of oppression and resistance.
- 5 Leadership Playbooks- Generate, plan, investigate, equip, and spin the missions and objectives of the Friction as The Mastermind, Planning, Intelligence, the Fixer, and Pirate Media.
- 7 Character Playbooks- Execute the missions from the point of view of the Face, the Trigger, the Hackjob, the Kitbash, the Slick, the Spark, and the Firebrand.
- 4 Cell Playbooks- Organize your specialists and freedom fighters, give them the best possible chance to bring the fight to the Dominion and end this nightmare as Assault, Recon, Acquisitions, and Outreach
- A GM Sheet - Including 3 Dominion Agendas, 3 Specialist Advancement Categories (yes, the GM levels, too) and TILT tracker to inject further drama.
The world outside the Walls might still be turning, but you can’t see it from here. The internet is filtered and outside communication is blocked. Inside, you’re alone. They have all the power. You’ll live and die under their eyes. The machine will grind on.
Unless you draw the line.
Purchase
In order to download this game you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of $12 USD. You will get access to the following files:
Exclusive content
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Community Copies
The world is on fire, and we've got to make choices about where our money goes. If you're cagey about pledging your hard-earned dollars, the ones you might need to put up toward rent or food or the other necessities of life, grab a copy and have fun, on us. If you like it and want to donate later to say thanks when circumstances change, we'll put up another community copy for someone else to enjoy.
We'll also be adding community copies whenever someone purchases No God's Country above the posted price.
Because that's how the movement grows.
Comments
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thank you for the community copy. I’m a big fan of BiTD and I’m eager to see what you have done. Once I’ve gone over it I’ll talk about it on the show. Much love
Is this game still in production?
It's still in the area of our to-do list affectionately referred to as the "meatlocker." Not currently a priority, but still something we intend to return to for further development and refinement.
Okay, good! GL to you guys in your endeavors! ^-^
Hey, just finished it! A really cool concept that I look forward to trying with my group.
Just a recommendation: As someone who has not played a FitD rpg before, an example of play, even a short one, would be extremely helpful to show how the mechanics are supposed to interact.
In general, some more examples would be nice, even just as recommendations, for example for the Tiers. What kind of obstacle would a Tier 2 obstacle for example be?
It's just a small criticism, which is probably none for more experienced FitD players. Overall I really enjoyed my read of the rulebook and I look forward to playing it!
Great points! Examples of play are key to getting folks who haven't gotten much FitD to the table to really grok the way the interlocking systems work together in play to ground the ongoing fiction. As it stands, we were trying to get the ashcan, the in-development and earliest iterable playtest, into folks hands. There's still a lot of work to be done before we can call anything finished or really be happy with the draft as a whole.
As for Tier, it's a helpful abstraction but it's hard to nail down. Tier 2's magnitude, scale, and quality is a discussion that might occur in the fiction, but as a quick wag of what I'd consider a Tier 2 obstacle? That'd be a checkpoint patrolled by 8 guards in bodyarmor with automatic weapons. They've got effective gear, communications equipment, there are more of them than a standard Cell, and they've got positional superiority. That's a /tough/ challenge to a cell starting out, overwhelming maybe. But with the tools available to a Cell--teamwork, flashbacks, using stress, load items, etc--they can bypass or overcome a Tier 2 challenge even as a Tier 0. It's a nasty setback, but doable.
Tier's abstract, and it's something that we'll definitely be exploring in greater detail as the ashcan develops.
I'm loving this - especially the Tilt mechanic.
Quick Q - what method does Planning use to decide what mission types will be available after a given downtime? Do they just get to pick for each of the three or is there a mission type chart?
Good question. No explicit mechanics for determining mission type just yet. Right now it's the Friction as a whole designating Mission types for Planning. Kind of a "hey what are we doing tonight phase." Planning generates the Mission details (what's to be done, what's to be gained, what might be lost).
Ooh this is awesome! XCOM in the Dark!
Definitely shades of Enemy Within! Great call!
The Drakes do it again. When it comes my turn to run a campaign again I was going to run court of blades, and then you release this and disaster/wing? I feel like I need to quit my job and just run games until I either get through the backlog or starve to death.
Keep up the great work.
Can't breathe...lungs full of rainbows...heart so full...
Thank you for continuing to be a defiant force of "YES" in an ocean of no. Your enthusiasm is rocket fuel, and it keeps us moving forward. Fast.